Artsmonkey Blog

Whilst the poor girl who came on to play the Harp before the match must have felt a million miles of detachment from the impatient crowd eager for the game to get going, she was a message. Music plays an important role in setting the patriotic tone of the game – allegiances are made, emotions toyed with as both the harpist, the band and choir who led the national anthems galvanise the audience, er sorry crowd, into a deeper emotional link with their team. In fact, with a bit more stage management the whole game could have left the crowd exhausted and begging for more.

Purists, I’m sure, could happily watch the game of Rugby played in a field half-way up a mountain and do without all the flim-flam but that doesn’t pay for the horrible polyester kit, sorry, I meant hi-tech, wind shear, shower proof, breathable membraneous sportwear – (whatever happened to those good, thick, quality cotton rugby shirts that actually look good on most people? ) and probably wouldn’t begin to pay the team’s nightclub bill for the celebration/commiseration party after the game to reward all the pre-match sweat, blood and tears of rigourous training.

You can tell I’m not sports orientated but I do appreciate the skill involved and am looking forward to seeing what Football and the Arts Award Academies get up to over the next year. The important thing is that young people have a chance to learn skills and that they have icons like Football & Rugby players to encourage them to aim high. The young welsh mascot who was marched on at the beginning of the game (alongside a goat??!) was beaming and it is very likely that he’ll be trying harder in PE for a good few months, if not years and as a result he might grow up to be a sportsman or maybe a sports commentator, a camera man or sound engineer, all equally vital parts of the modern world of Sports – if it wasn’t a good watch (ie. Entertaining) people like me would stay at home.

So we need to celebrate the opportunities where organisations invest in young people or they’ll end up like two young girls I bumped into at Cardiff Central, one clutching a bottle of Malibu, the other so high she couldn’t do her clothes up properly (or walk straight), overlooked by two stoic members of the St Johns Ambulance who’d voluntarily given up their Saturday night to be on hand with first aid, as the girls thrashed about in pursuit of a good time, looking like their ‘night out’ may just be about to end in the gloom of the platform one toilets.

Rugby is a bone crunching, awesome game when viewed from the heady heights of the Millenium Stadium, Cardiff. Choreography, speed, teamwork, body mass, muscle and nerve all come into play. This weekend’s Wales versus the Springboks (South Africa) brought 74k people to huddle under the roof of this city centre based stadium, causing network rail to galvanise staff at Cardiff Central into various attempts at shepherding those visiting safely in and out of the station (I wonder where the 6,000 people who didn’t make it got to?). Some shops saw fit to close before the game ended and I can see why, seventy four thousand people leaving a venue is quite a sight and it occured to me that if everyone there dropped a penny in the bucket that members of the Armed Forces were holding on behalf of the charity ‘Help for Heroes’ that would have been an easy seven hundred and forty pounds made, but it looked to me like most people had already spent their money on several pints of beer; I’m not a regular Rugby match attender but it does seem that this is as much a necessity as having a ticket.

It’s a sporting month in the youth arts universe; this month saw the launch of Arts Award Football Academies, an example of football and art coming together to work with young people on creative activities to gain a qualification. Already I have noted the almost dance-like grace of the Springboks where their defense was almost a choreographed routine taking them from one side of the pitch to the other with the Welsh team crashing about around them, literally like bulls in a China shop (Wales I was cheering for you, honest!) and I can see how the arts and sports are really not so different, who’s that rugby player gracefully holding his own in ‘Strictly Come Dancing’?

Glorious afternoon in Brighton. 

Our heartfelt thanks to Food Project volunteers/friends and to Feral Theatre Company for the wonderful storytelling. Homemade Toffee apples, soul cake, pumpkin soup and baked potatoes made for an unforgettable All Souls Day. Before we tore ourselves away, I couldn’t bear to dismantle my ‘inner child’, so left it hanging on a bush to scare the crows away.

Watch out for Feral’s new website and if you live nearby don’t miss their next event, heartwarming, affirming and brimming with friendly folk – plus the big adventure of finding it in the first place!

 Travelling from Brighton to Chichester one evening this week I witnessed a lovely train guard at work, he evicted a group of excitable youngsters (who clearly didn’t have tickets) with such good humour they got off at the next stop without a fuss and impedending disaster was averted. He then rescued a woman traveller in distress (on the wrong train and doomed to miss her connection to Cambridge) he got her on the right train, calmly and coolly sorted out a new route and timetable then, equally calmly issued another man with a ticket for his journey the next day when he overheard him worrying about the ticket office being open – not sure I’ve conveyed the sheer amazement I experienced watching someone be so personable, so thoughtful. It was that small but kind gesture that warmed me and next day I was invited to join a facebook group  ’small acts of kindness’ these are indeed, the times for small acts of kindness.

 It’s always pleasant to find yourself unexpectedly in a room with like-minded people and thanks to The South  I got to do just that this week at The Brighton Writer’s Centre with writer Mark C. Hewitts session on ‘Funding Your Madness’ which was so enjoyable that I barely noticed the two hour journey home. A catchy title with a truthful ring to it, we all have great ideas and often it seems like madness when you get into the ‘funding zone’. Mark is a man who has made it through the pain barrier and approaches each new collaboration or project with zest and enthusiasm, as a result his work is vibrant and inspiring you can check him out at http://mchblank.co.uk. I was also inspired by learning about Feral Theatre Company who offer seasonal themed outdoor performances around East Sussex and will be peforming at The Allotments (at the food project) Whitehawk Hill (off Manor Hill Road), Brighton at 3pm on Sunday November 2^nd in case you’re looking for something for the family to do that week-end and similarly inspired by meeting Umi who is a member of the Newhaven Storytellers group and is off to a storytellers convention in Israel next year to seek inspiration for a storytelling project she is in the throes of creating and seeking funding for. I went, intending to be a passive onlooker, to refresh some of my knowledge and check out The South but I came away full of other people’s creative experience’s and fired up to do my homework and get it in on time. In fact, it is only today that I realise I was given homework, that’s how clever with words Mr Hewitt is. The view from the front room at BWC overlooks the Grand Parade with its constant, frenetic to-ing and fro-ing of traffic and people. It is virtually next door to Brighton Photo Bienniale http://bpb.org.uk which I fully intend to have a look at on my return visit next week – I caught glimpses of a photo exhibition: the war of images and images of war curated by Julian Stallabrass as I passed; pictures taken by soldiers in Iraq flashed by as I hurried to make my ‘class’ (as I fondly think of it). The South offers a myriad of events for creatives and is partnered with some fascinating organisations such as sea lion and pighog press and offering exceptional events (Carol Ann Duffy) and professional development workshops including ‘The Write Club’ - don’t let them go to waste you’re bound to meet interesting people and have a very enjoyable time.

National poetry day looms on Thursday October 9^th I’ve been browsing sites in search of inspiration and have enjoyed stumbling upon the Altered Books project and had fun with ‘Written in the city‘ especially the Brighton pages although Brighton in 2002 was a different universe. Did you know that ‘newspaper+sharpie=poems’? Well Michael Palmer seems to think so and creates and collects great “blackout” poems in this fashion from around the world, check him out on Facebook or visit www.michaelpalmer.net to see examples or enter your own. I came across ‘the invitation’ by Oriah Mountain dreamer from the book ‘invitation’ and really enjoyed some inner wisdom from the mountains…

“…It doesn’t interest me to know where you live,or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children…It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away”

 But then I got sidetracked by Digg & Twitter and went from Doug McFarlane’s you tube recommendation on the credit crunch (filmed in a car park I dimly recognise) to this: check them out on My Space Antan Debt performs with his band ‘The Overdrafts’ not to be confused with Adam and Joe’s “Credit Crunch Musical” song, as touted by Charlie Booker or Old Man Pies credit card song posted in 2006 (and a prophetic cartoon animation) which are both equally witty commentaries. Then, somehow and I’m really not sure how, I ended up watching the ‘Shelbinator’ show me how to turn a nokia N95 into a video cam with external mic. If you are a techgeek who has accidentally clicked on the wrong blog site - you can watch it too @ http://shelbinator.com/2008/05/04/n95-external-microphone/ which tells me I must end here or who knows where I’ll end up before tea-time so take it away e.e. cummings (as found @ www.kerismith.com/wishJarTales/ ) “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it’s best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

@ the Rootstein Hopkins Space, London College of Fashion last week for own-it and Stellar Networks seminar starring the very patient and extremely well-phrased lawyer Harry Karaolou from LG Legal. The event, ‘The Writer/Producer/Director Triangle - a guide to good practice of collaboration in Theatre’ didn’t disappoint. A rare event indeed when the panel has as many questions as the audience but ever since, my head has been full of ‘creative commons, trademarks, originators, copyright, performers’ rights’, and phrases such as, “asserting your moral rights”.

What can I pass on in a creative universe where more and more people are creating bodies of work through collaboration and shared experience? That it’s important to know your intellectual property from your development or design rights? You don’t want to make the same mistakes that members of the audience have done in the past, so at the get-go agree who does what and what is whose. Get an agreement, get i-p savvy.

I remember reading an article in a newspaper a few years ago, asking what our lives would be like if there was no television, if we all switched them off for a day, a week? At several points in my life I have lived without TV. When I was born and up to the age of about four, then later when my father suffered a major injury and our TV died and my mother couldn’t afford to replace it whilst he was in hospital, even later during a tour of Scotland when I wasn’t interested in anything other than ‘Taggart’.

In the eighties my uncle moved in to our flat in Streatham with his portable TV. I had been living in poverty without a TV, feeding myself and baby on £10 a week whilst my partner was up north in a seventies revival musical - then it was a novelty being Tv-less. Now I switch it off , at will, for days at a time because who ever the programmers are, they only seem focussed on young audiences and the kind of stuff I like watching is clearly in the non-commercial bracket or maybe it’s because I’m not a robot but a human with eclectic tastes. I like to dip in and out of genres, prefer quality to quantity and genuinely enjoy good acting and performers who prefer to entertain rather than to shock (although I can cope with that in small doses).

In fact, I am in danger of becoming a ‘new audience’ there is so little for me to watch on the tele despite the variety of channels. I read that young people are switching off from mainstream TV - really?  As a parent this is great news, but as a parent I know it’s because they’re glued to their computer screens having their brains sucked out by msn, bebo, myspace, deviant art, my yearbook, IM, etc., downloading i-films to watch in the privacy of their bedrooms.

 ”New method sought to measure audiences”, no let’s have A NEW MEASURE TO STOP APPLYING METHOD TO broadcasting ?

Caught up with the Peter Hall Company for a matinee performance of ‘Enjoy’. I thought it was inspired to call a play ‘Enjoy’. Lots of jokes about that in the pizza restauraunt after the show when a pre-theatre party arrived and attempted to wolf down pasta and make the final bell before evening curtain-up.
I’ve mixed feelings about Alan Bennet these days, ever since I read the ‘History Boys’ I have an over-riding sense of an old man in a grubby mac. I know he writes fantastic dialogue and people say what a very nice man he is - not that I ever expect to meet him but ‘Enjoy’ was such an odd amalgamation of alienating concept and beautifully observed characters I couldn’t help but wonder if it was really written for television. Did I enjoy ‘Enjoy’? (sorry but I had to ask). In parts the story of the Craven family was moving, funny and entertaining but the museum idea, the distanced observation, the men (and woman) in grey suits didn’t work on stage - all totally superfluous to the central story of the Cravens, their lives and loves and death (well almost). Perhaps, like Margaret Thatchers idea of a ‘Poll tax’, in theory and way-back-when in the eighties it was written, it might have seemed clever and modern and workable. Sadly in the dim reality of the royal circle in the Theatre Royal Bath it didn’t. Well not for me at least, although other people were laughing, I suspect because they desperately wanted to - it has been such a grey, grey summer. I’m sure that actors love Alan Bennet for his detailed, beautiful dialogue, for his wonderful characters (especially the women) but I sat there and craved for the Cravens to be left unadulterated, untouched by the flim-flam of witty, clever invaders. I suppose when you’ve a large company of actors it’s no use using just five of them when you can bung a whole load on in the second act and wake up the old gents asleep in the circle. Oh well, I suppose it’s no suprise I ended up depressed by ‘Enjoy’ and  back in Bath three days later at the Old Mortuary Chapel in Walcot Street to view an exhibition by sculptor and painter Gordon Dickinson and precocious young student Adam Crossland.

Gordon was once a coach-builder for British Rail but now creates giant steel horses for Primary Schools (and Swindon if they’ll only get their heads round it) and elegant eagles on silver birch poles poised to take flight but he also paints abstract pictures in rich yellows, oranges and browns. I was drawn (as I suspect many others have been) to his painting of a small teddy bear he found half-drowned in the middle of a road which he rescued and gave a home to - he has painted this bear stretched out on a vivid yellow background and entitled it ‘just holding on’. I also liked his black textured paintings of flowers, bold and exquisite from a distance, exploding off the canvas as you get up close. The venue was a wonderful bright and characterful place to be (reminded me a bit of Mrs Craven in Enjoy) and I desperately wished I could take the Teddy Bear painting home, although Gordon has since facebooked me a picture of one of his ‘Marcel Marceau’ paintings brilliantly capturing the expression of a man who spoke without words as he plucks with his thumb and forefinger a stream of colour, ‘magic’ from the air. The painting is entitled ‘when you find it, hold on to it’. Now I want one of those as well!

Adam’s work, in case you’re wondering was ‘precocious’ (especially in price), confident - painted on wood, cardboard probably done in no time at all and very …. well, it seemed angry to me but equally the sort of ‘illustration style’ stuff you’d see in magazines for the ‘teenage-to-twenty-somethings’ market and it worked well against Gordon’s sculptures and paintings.

 As the rain poured down on Bath, I stood and looked out the chapel window to see a grey mist rise, whilst Gordon stirred my imagination with tales of his plans for an exhibition of souls based on his experiences of buying souls on ebay and the stories that have sprung from these mostly tongue-in-cheek transactions. Although I googled “souls for sale” when I got home and realise that there has been hot and heavy debate on this activity and ebay now no longer permits the selling of ones soul(before you rush off to the computer thinking that may just be what you need to raise this months mortgage payment). So, somewhat ironically, my spirits were raised in the old mortuary chapel by the thought of ’souls’ sold for a penny, the debate on the cheapness of life, the morality of it, the creativity and the care with which Gordon (owner of 50 souls) treats it and how he intends to return them intact via the angels of art (and his beautifully animated eagle sculptures). I wandered off, back down historic Walcot Street with my imagination fired, my creativity stoked, my soul touched (but still my own) - don’t be suprised if I become a partner in this venture and start promoting the exhibition any time soon.

This past two weeks of Olympics fever has been the perfect end to a four year endurance test of my own. I am coming to the end of one of those contracts that just kept getting renewed, in frustratingly short bursts but such was my committment to the cause that each time the end was in sight I knew I had another extra mile to go, another personal best to achieve, another record to break and so I kept on until finally a re-mortgage, major house repairs and a dwindling bank balance forced me to re-think. These past few years have been all about team committment, leadership, achievement and personal bests (not just mine) and a certain amount of sports involvement which is unusual in the arts but perhaps only to be expected in ‘youth arts’, which, reflective of the young people who engage with youth arts is always taking on board new cultures, new ideas and also old ones, tinkering with them, tugging at them, re-shaping, re-forming them to see what they can come up with. So whilst the majority of the artsworld were bemoaning the advent of 2012 and the expected bleeding of government investment from the arts into sport and ‘better than Bejiing’ Olympic preparations, young people in the world of Arts Award were rising to the challenge and mulling over the links with sport and art.

In Mountbatten school, Romsey Arts Award participants worked towards running a visual arts ‘master class’ with their arts teacher to design silk banners with primary school students prior to participating in a mini olympics. The whole school has been linking arts to sport to produce a cultural olympiad week - designs for chinese kites, dance performances etc., etc., all part of their own mini-Bejiing ‘08 held in July.

In four football clubs across the South East young people are being invited to work with them by learning how to wirte sports articles, produce designs for promotional material, script radio adverts and use a variety of creative skills that link back into the football clubs more mainstream youth activity. Why? So they can gain an Arts Award and broaden their horizons and skills base. Pretty forward thinking, Southampton, Reading, Bournemouth and Brighton Footie Clubs - shame on you Portsmouth!

Arts is often viewed as a soft option, although some artforms such as ‘dance’ and ‘circus acrobatics’ have more obvious traits in common. Unless you’ve been in a play, produced works of art for an exhibition, performed in a band in front of a crowd, it’s hard to appreciate the myriad of skills involved, especially if you do it well and give off an aura of confidence - it looks so easy, any fool could do that couldn’t they? Sports personalities appear in Panto’s so it can’t be that difficult, can it?

Well olympian achievements aren’t just for sports men and women. Although I was riveted to the television when I watched David Davies swim his marathon, silver medal winning 2 hour open water race. His determination to carry on, despite the distinctly unsporting attempts to ‘knobble’ him (only one red card ref? there were two of them trying to drown him). The whole thing really reminded me of a Youth Arts Company I know and their gargantuan efforts to apply for and secure funding. No one can doubt the excellent work they do, the committment of the  Gold Arts Award achieving company members and the Co-Directors Nina & Jason from Peer Productions but it’s a race and there are only a certain amount of spaces at the finishing line. All sorts of obstacles in the way, only young people can apply for some funding pots, you have to meet the funding criteria, it’s not about how good your work is or the noble past acheivements of your company, you can’t just re-jig the funding application from your last application. Its tough. Each small pot of £1k or 15k applied for has to be fought hard for, homework done, budgets produced, boxes ticked, people wooed, hearts and minds won over and then you might be lucky to get it but it’s only a years worth. Funding is usually for no more than three years and is rarely enough  to enable artists and arts organisations to produce all that great work that people want them to come up with. You just have to keep going and give it all you’ve got, except in the Arts the finish line is constantly being moved a bit further away.

I don’t know much about Sports funding but Arts funding is a gritty business, unless (I hastily add) you’re an Arts Award centre and only looking for up to £500 pounds in that case you can apply for an ‘Access Fund’ Grant where the lovely fund sponsors  ‘Deutsche Bank’ have worked with Trinity Guildhall to produce a one page application, with a broad set of criteria and positively no hoops, no tricks - if only it was always that simple.

Well it isn’t. Embarking on a career in the arts; in film, dance, music, theatre, digital media - it’s a slog and no mistaking. Just as it was for those Olympian sports men and women in Bejiing, it’s a never ending road of reaching out for the unattainable. You have to have guts, focus, determination and discipline - if you don’t you won’t get the work and never be in the running for that ‘big one’ not necessarily a Bafta or an Olivier because they are (if we are honest) slightly elitist and not fully representative of the Arts. So what is the artistic equivalent of the Olympics? Well, it’s quite likely there isn’t and never will be an equivalent, because the one point where the arts disembark from a raft of commanalities with Sports is in celebrating our acheivements - we are rubbish at it. We either sing our own praises too loudly or we’re too busy working on our next artistic endeavour to stop for a pat on the back and as for competition… well that’s another discussion entirely. In the meantime, I’m off to mull over my achievements and the nature of them. I’m too old to be given a supportive glad hand by the youth driven culture of the arts - there is no platinum Arts Award for the over 25’s - so no-ones going to do it for me. Did I do well? Was I exceptional? Oh I don’t know. I’ve done good things with good people, I’ll miss it, I’ll miss them - it’s opened my eyes to new horizons, I’m bouyed by the passion, the drive, the sheer imagination of the teachers, arts officers, youth workers, education officers, care workers, mentors and artists that I have met. I feel privileged, tired but privileged and couldn’t really care less about whether I’ve earnt a medal or not. Some of the most precious achievements are felt but never known.